


Initiate Trials

by KitandWolfe



Series: The Invocation of Syn [1]
Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 16:49:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10469664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitandWolfe/pseuds/KitandWolfe
Summary: A long time ago... in a galaxy far far away there was an ancient Sith threat woken on a remote red planet in an isolated region of the Outer Rim.  It has spend thousands of years planning its rise in power, and its manipulations and machinations have woven through the lives of two Jedi, intertwining them forever.  This is their story.





	1. Prologue - The Fall of The Red Scar Clan

Kelleri Kylvarika was filled with a bone-chilling unease. The sensation spread as she as she rode through her clan’s territory, braids whipping, ceremonial headdress itching, face paint sweating down her face and neck. Tendrils of frosted worry settled into her stomach, she was late past the toleration of her Mother and Sisters. (A shadow of nervous anticipation for the day’s ceremony fluttered in her stomach, but her guilt and self-reproach were overriding the feeling.) She had spent extra time riding this morning as a birthday gift to herself and in the sheer joy of the unfettered freedom of riding, she had lost track of time completely. 

It was only supposed to be moments of uninterrupted galloping through the forest, unfettered and aimless, before she returned to her ceremony. Connected to her mount through the Spirit, they rode as if they were one: Grukkgruk was more than a pet or means of transportation, they were the best of friends. Tasting the exhilarating freedom in the soft morning light, moments slipped and stretched into hours of joy-riding.

She spent weeks communing with the Spirit in trances and DreamWalks to prepare mentally, physically, and spiritually for the gathering and ritual. Now that the day was here she was woken before dawn to bathe and suffer through the ritual of being dressed in the Shamanic Warrior garments of her tribe. 

Her blood red hair was tightly braided in bands across the left side of her scalp, the first two of her ceremonial warrior’s braids. The rest of her long hair was twisted and knotted then woven around a heavy, ancient ceremonial headdress of bone and feathers that was firmly secured to her head, pinned into the braids. Her face was carefully painted with white bands of indigo across her eyes and under her cheekbones, adding harsh angles to her round cheeks and heart shaped face. Her clothing was a stiff cloth tunic and breeches over which she wore a chest piece of overlapping green lizard leather. She wore cloth breeches tucked into her leather boots and with leather armor strapped to her hips and thighs, arms and shoulders. Her hands were gloved. She had hunted the lizards for this armor and spent months tanning and cutting and sewing it together. She had created a hunting spear and dagger, and slain a nest of vipers to harvest the poison to dip the tips of her clan’s weaponry in. She looked nothing like herself, she was the very image of competent wild fearsome power, exactly as her mother wanted to portray the future leader of the Red Scar Clan.

“We are proud of you,” her mother told her, crowning her braids with the spiked bone and feather headdress, tucking a bit of bead and feather behind her ear. “This is the same headdress that I wore when I was crowned as the imminent Clan Mother of the Singing Mountain Clan. I was your age when I received it, and half the Shaman and huntress that you are. You will continue to honor our entire clan with your strength and prowess for all of your years.”

Jyreeth was one of three daughters of the Clan Mother of the Singing Mountain Clan, the oldest and most feared and respected tribe on Dathomir. Jyreeth and her sister Feren had been at odds with the traditions of their Mother, and saw them as outdated and unnecessary. Feren wanted to study the forbidden Spirit magic, the spells not covered in their Book of Law, and Jyreeth had fallen in love with an outsider, took him as her husband, and bore his child. She viewed him as her equal, and wanted to raise their future sons as she raised her daughters, and not keep them as slaves or servants, an unorthodox idea, completely against the way of the Dathomiri. Mother Jyreeth and the sisters who followed her heresy with her were exiled from the Singing Mountain Clan. 

They claimed their territory where no others would – in an abandoned part of forest near a cursed temple to the Fanged God along the barren land at the edge of the Red Scar. Dathomiri lore said that the Red Scar was created during of a battle between the Winged Goddess and the Fanged God. Their battle was so great that they almost tore the world apart, leaving a vast scarred gorge that stretched for hundreds of kilometers. It averaged five kilometers across and ran about a kilometer deep along its entire length revealing red banded rock and a river of green ichor. The gorge split Dathomir open wide like a great gaping mouth that threatened to swallow the pyramid temple that loomed over it. The green ichor that was used for all evil magicks flowed freely through this chasm, through and beneath the lower floors of the temple.

It was forbidden for any tribe to enter the Red Scar Temple or to have any dealings with the followers of the Fanged God: the Dark Men and NightSisters. The Nightsisters were evil, exiled witches, had formed their own tribe in the dense swamplands far from the Red Scar. But the Dark Men were something of a mystery to Kelleri, they were outsiders who had come to Dathomir with their children just before her birth, and lived and studied their magicks in the cursed temple. Feren had tried, and failed, to bring Jyreeth’s tribe to join the Nightsisters and they had been bitter enemies ever since. While the NightSisters warred with all of the other clans of Dathomir, the Dark Men seemed neutral to the tribal battles. 

As progressive as her ideas may have been, Kelleri’s mother knew that the other clans respected strength and prowess over all else. She had called representatives from all the clans of Dathomir to gather for a tribal summit that would begin with the ritual of Kelleri’s naming day. Jyreeth had also negotiated an alliance with the Dark Men and hoped to unite the clans under one tribe, against the NightSisters, to show the Singing Mountain Clan and the entirety of Dathomir her vision for the future. This new alliance was crucial for their Clan’s survival and Kelleri had to do her best to ensure that she impressed their new allies and her sisters.

And she was late for her grand entrance.

"Korr et zeth," she cursed.

That same niggling, shadowy, fluttering feeling wormed its way up her spine, settling in the back of her mind: something was making her uneasy and it wasn’t guilt.

Kelleri was mounted and yet her knees were weak, her mouth dry, and her stomach tumbled in a nervous flip flop of cold dread. She wasn’t used to feeling so high-strung, and it wasn’t because of the impending ceremony. Her mount, Grukkgruk felt it too, rearing and roaring, empathizing with the shakiness of her rider. They pressed forward, back to camp.

Time passed dream-like and mercurial; the ride was languid, syrupy slow, stretching on and on back to her family – then the landscape shifted abruptly and all she saw was ash and ruin. Her heart stopped, her breath caught in her throat.

Her clan’s encampment and several of the other tribes’ were in smoking shambles before her.

Her mind refused to process the horror as she searched through the destruction for any sign of survivors – but the camps were deserted. They had been ransacked and burnt after the people had left for the ceremony.

The first sign of life that she came across first was her clan’s herd of agitated Rancor sows. If it were an attack by Nightsisters there would be survivors, and the rest of the clan would have mounted for attack. Nothing made sense. Shaking, she dismounted from her sow and used their Spirit connection to send reassuring, calming feelings to the Rancor, despite her personal turmoil. It was a difficult decision as everything felt safer with Grukkgruk, but she couldn’t easily search for her clan mates through the dense forest while mounted. If the entire herd were still together then none of the clan were riding after the attackers; they couldn't be far away.

She was apprehensive to get closer to the divide that created the waste of the Red Scar, but the fog of the forest mixed with the oddly smelling fire from the camp destruction. That was more unnerving than the discordant song that hummed in her head whenever she was near the Red Scar. She made her way carefully through the trees and underbrush leading towards the meeting place where she was supposed to celebrate her first day of being a Clan Mother and meet with the Dark Men of the Red Scar.

She came across the first body in the forest, severed in two. She checked the body with a detachment that she didn’t know she had. It was sliced clean through and the wound was cauterized, still smelling of charred flesh. There were more than one attacker but they were neither animals nor NightSisters. Kelleri was an accomplished hunter, she was confident in her ability to recognize marks, trails, and tracks of the lizards and creatures of the forests. She followed the disturbed leaves of the forest floor to a second, and a third body, gingerly investigating the bloodless, cauterized wounds.

The trail led towards, or away from, a clearing where the day’s events were to take place. The dirt was torn up in clods and mounds, trees felled unnaturally, the buzz of the Fanged God’s magic hung in the air. She could feel the aura of it, sticky and viscous on her skin. She was trained as a Shaman and knew the touch of it through the Spirit, sensing it easily as one would see, smell, or hear. The trail of it and a morbid curiosity pulled her towards the meeting place, a clearing where the trees ended and the waste of the Red Scar began. She shut away the small part of her mind screaming at her to run away.

A dais had been built in the glade to host the tribal summit, and her grand entrance was supposed to be from the right side of the forest, with a minimal amount of pomp. The dais was where the unknown enemies would be, and with them, hopefully, the rest of her clan of sisters.

She was headed straight for death and regretted not bringing Grukkgruk. At least she had her new spear within easy reach upon her back but it was not a warm reassurance.

There were no animal or insect sounds here, only the inharmonious hum of the Scar, one did not need to be Spirit touched to hear it this close to the red wasted earth. She picked out another sound from the murmur of the Scar; voices carried through the forest and they grew louder as she followed the haze of the remnants of the Fanged God’s spells. She ventured closer to the source in silence, under the cover of tree shadows until she was sure that she was on the right path. Before the speakers would reach her, she bounded over a newly fallen trunk and pulled herself onto the lower branches of a tree near the perimeter of the clearing.

She pulled herself up to a high perch just in time to hear the husky, angry voice of a boy, one of the Dark Men, she couldn’t understand his words but she could sense the malice in his harsh tongue. She could see his cloaked head as he passed underneath the branches of her tree. He was clearly agitated, gesturing with a dark cylinder clutched in one gloved hand. Everything about him was obscured by the hooded cloak and she could only tell that he was tall and strongly built, and he wore thick padded armor on his arms and legs. There was a glint of something from the hood, even in the low light of the forest. A second person stalked silently next to him, hands fisted at his side. She could see clearly what the glint came from - this person wore a black, red, and silver mask. It looked similar to the tattoos of the NightBrothers His face was masked and he matched another armored person who wore a similar mask and hooded cloak. He was speaking to a man with a commanding posture, the aura of the Fanged God seeped in black tendrils from him. This was the Dark Man, their leader, but he wore no armor that she could see, only a gleaming mask that covered his face and a dark cloak that covered his hair and back.

A response came from a feminine voice, and her stomach tightened further into a knot of fear. A Nightsister, known only to her as Feren, was speaking their same language. She was dressed for battle in the blood-dyed lizard leathers and headdress, and her pale skin bore the battle paint of a warrior.

Kelleri crept with skillful silence over the strong tree limbs to gain a better view, she was dressed in green and brown, and if anyone were to look up she would blend in with the foliage completely if it weren’t for her headdress. She reached for the Spirit, mouthing an incantation to the Winged Goddess. From her vantage point she could see into the clearing through the branches and leaves of her hiding spot.

The Dark Man towered above a line of people from her wooden dais. To his left and right were the two masked ones and Feren, but no one else stood with him on the platform. The Red Scar clan was lined in front of the dais like an offering. Several NightSisters gripped weapons, standing guard behind the bound, captured forms of her Sisters. Everyone was dressed for battle, many were injured, but from her count her Sisters were sorely outnumbered. The silent masked person obediently left his Master’s side, and he strode into the forest in a loping gait. He was walking right towards her tree.

Kelleri held back the gasp that would give her away and swallowed her rising bile. The rational part of her was afraid of this person, she had to survive. She pushed her fear deep into her mind. Adrenaline coursed through her as her heart pounded in her ears, dulling the cascade of emotions of fright and terror.

The Dark Man shouted a command from the stage. Horrible red blades hummed to life then everything was shouting and anger and fighting. It wouldn’t matter now, if the person hunting her found her, the battle had begun. She still held the advantage, she was above him and could use the spells of the Spirit. 

Kelleri released the spell of wind and dropped from her perch on the tree as the person drew close. Her spell should have knocked him backwards into a tree, but barely pushed against the black-clad person and only whipped the robes and leaves around his body. It wouldn’t matter, then, she held her spear firmly. The tip was sharp and coated in the poison of a deadly viper, it would kill him with one blow.

The boy called to her frantically, speaking in Basic, but she couldn’t understand.

She slowly rose from a crouch, scowling furiously at him, her weapon trained on his slowly advancing form. “Have you come to kill me to? Like you slaughtered my three sisters?” She asked quietly in Paecian, her native language.

“Others will. Not me. I told sisters, told them to run far.” He gestured to himself, then towards the clearing with a wide, sweeping motion. “You run.” He spoke with an odd dialect, like he had learned from a remote clan of NightSisters. He knew just enough of her language to communicate with her.

“I won’t run from battle.” She had a determined set to her jaw, and twisted her spear in her hands aching to slice into him.

“No, don’t fight, just go!” He was adamant, and then switched to Basic, the common language of the galaxy far beyond her planet.

“If I am to die, then I will die as a warrior.” While he was pleading with her to go, she spoke the words of another spell, coaxing vines from the forest floor to wrap around his feet.

He realized the trap a split second too late, and was ensnared. She darted towards the sounds of battle at the clearing on the edge of the Red Scar.

A growl and a sharp humming buzz behind her was all she heard to know that he was free, chasing after her. She didn’t get far, heart-pounding wildly, sprinting through the forest –then there were two predators chasing her, and she dashed madly around the trees.

The sickening, bloody smell of the battle stopped her before the sight registered. The keening wails and guttural sounds of death slammed into her ears soon after. One of the predators already had her in his grasp, lifting her backwards from the ground. She didn’t resist, slack with shock: her mother was there, kneeling, with twin red blades at her throat. Her face was bloodied and bruised, arms and legs streaked with gashes and dirt as if she had been drug through the forest.

Their eyes met and Kelleri watched as the fight drained from her mother. Her mother – they had her mother! Kelleri’s fear sprung from its prison in her mind and gripped her. She barely registered an intake of air from above her head, as if her captor was about to reprimand her, then she was spun around, away from her mother to face a masked monster.

The Dark Man’s mask was a gleaming metallic thing, impassive, with slits and jagged edges, he spoke to the person holding her but no mouth moved, it was hidden beneath the mask. His hands clapped together in applause. Kelleri stopped processing the events around her, frozen in shock and horror, she watched as tendrils of blackness whipped towards her. The Dark Man was speaking to the crowd, but Kelleri’s ears were full of ringing.

Kelleri was desperate and dumb with fear. She called to the Spirit wordlessly, forgetting to name a deity, and the rush of power was reckless and its response was fast, draining the Spirit from the forest and gathering it to her body. She pulled equally from the Red Scar and then she connected to any willing source. She can’t stop from drawing in the vicious black tendrils of the Dark Man’s strange aura and fills herself like a vessel of pure Spirit. Being a conduit for this much energy is too dangerous, she knows, it usually takes a full clan to aid a Shaman drawing this much from the Spirit. But what does she have to lose? Now it is easy enough to open and connect to the Ur-spirits of her clan’s herd of Rancor. She reaches Grukkgruk and the rest of the sows, commanding them towards her.

The boy holding her has gripped tightly into her shoulders and this physical touch brings her awareness back to her body. She can’t move her limbs correctly as she is being ripped through by the Spirit, it pulses against her skin, and she feels it ready to absorb her and to tear her apart from within. She’s been turned back to the clearing somehow, still slack in the prison of her captor’s arms.

One of the Red Scar children unbound her mother and handed her their blade, it glowed red and made the same buzzing hum as the rest. Her mother, the matriarch of the Red Scar Clan was a shaman, strong with Spirit spells and wild magic, but she accepted the blade. Unbound, she called forth a wind, and pulled vines from the ground to wrap around the Dark Man. He anticipated the vines and danced forward, avoiding their lashing pull, and slashes with the red blade. Jyreetha, her mother, isn’t elegant, controlled rage like her opponent. She is a creature of Dathomir, a wild magic Shaman, and is screaming incantations, crouched low to the ground like a beast. She swipes with claws made of Spirit and wind razors whipped around the Dark Man, in relentless waves, the only thing that Mother Jyreeth can do with the red sword is guard.

He was only playing with her, she wasn’t trained with his weapon, and it was useless against the Dark Coward’s blade. She has first blood cutting into him with her Spirit claws, but the black aura absorbs them. The Spirit razors and wind dissipate as soon as they reach him. Enraged, he plunged the red blade through her chest as she clawed deep into his ribs.

Kelleri wanted to scream, but she couldn’t remember which mouth to open. She was channeling the Spirit, and it flowed wild and uncontrolled through her body. She was connected with her herd of Rancor and the teeming life of the forest. She had double vision: seeing the fight in front of her and the crashing of the forest through the eyes of a herd of Rancor. When she blinked, all of the eyes blink, when she breathed, all of the life breathes.

They are coming to her aid but she knows it is already too late.

Her power spanned through the forest, she could feel her sisters, and she could feel their life force becoming one with the Spirit again. She had ignored the flow of the Fanged God’s power until now. The Rancor mounts of the Nightsisters were within her reach, so she twisted and pulled from the darkness of the Red Scar, and ripped that energy from the Dark Man. Something whispered in her mind then, she would be destroyed if she were to take the power through her body, she could force it into something else, and she flooded the power into those beasts causing them to buck and bulge as the Spirit was shoved into them. They began to warp unnaturally with the power, then froth and rave into a raging frenzy.

Her captor spun her around, staring into her eyes; she sees his mask, the forest, and the scene through the eyes of the stampeding, murderous Rancor. She closes the connection to the violence, and focuses on his mouth, trying to understand the words that he is saying to her.

Another blade, deep purple, flashes over his shoulder, and she is pushed away from her captor. He turns to guard her from the advancing group. A curly-haired dusky-skinned boy is brandishing the purple blade, flanked by a group of five NightSisters. This was the other boy, without his metal mask. She could see his face now, eerily lit by his dark blade and warped with an expression of malevolence.

He motioned for the group with a curt tip of his head and they come for her and her captor. Kelleri burned brightly with the pain of holding so much of the Spirit of The Fanged God but she was not afraid of the NightSisters.

Grukkgruk was almost to her, and she looks through her own eyes, and her sow’s, to share the scene in front of her, the danger, the rage, and the urgency, then she allows the connection to wane, unable to hold onto the herd without channeling the Spirit and leaving her physical body vulnerable.

Two blades clashed as the boy and her captor battled. She saw her captor-turned-defender had a double-bladed weapon, then lost track of his fight as the five NightSisters advanced. Kelleri used the Spirit wildly, burning as it coursed through her body, whirling wildly and sending razor edged wind into the group. Her first opponent was on her with a spell of illusion, ripping at Kelleri with giant claws, Kelleri dodged the claws then shoved her spear into the woman’s side. The Nightsister hissed and screamed, clawing at Kelleri’s hands and pulling the spear from her side. It was too late, the viper poison on the spear started working immediately. She fell to the ground cursing and convulsing.

The remaining four NightSisters watch the woman’s body as it succumbed to the poison and Kelleri brandished her spear at them menacingly. She reached a hand out, chanting the incantation of another spell.

Over the choking wet frothing noise of the Nightsister could hear another’s thoughts: use this power, destroy the NightSisters and the Dark Man. She was surrounded with the blackness now, having called it from the Dark Man to herself, but she wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was so easy to reach to the Fanged God here, so easy to accept the swell of dark energy flowing from the Red Scar, it would be so easy to destroy everything.

She released the gathered energy in a thrust of black shadow that ripped over the ground then rose and slammed into the four women like a tidal wave. They careened end over end backwards and immersed in shadow, tumbling towards the two fighting boys.

The blackness twisted of its own accord and shaped into vines that wrapped around the head and neck of the mask-less boy. She wasn’t fully in control of it, and had to reassert her will to stop it from diving into his throat and suffocating him. She wanted to protect her only ally in this fight, not destroy everyone. One of the four NightSister’s had rolled with the dark wave of energy and recovered quickly, then rushed to aid the mask-less boy. She tried to catch the boy with the red lightsaber unaware and cut him down from behind. Kelleri’s ally neatly stepped away from his opponent, now drowning in dark vines, then twisted and twirled his blade backwards into the midsection of the advancing NightSister without looking.

He took another half step and whipped his dual ended blade into the second opportunist. The last two NightSisters stared at both of them as the mask-less boy writhed on the ground, trying to rip the shadow vines from his neck and face. Kelleri had no more control over the spell, it pulled itself from her to engulf the boy.   
Her stampede of Rancor arrived, too late to rescue their riders. She stared to her mount forlornly unable to feel their Spirit-connection, it was as if she were severed from the Spirit entirely. We have no home, she thought. We have no clan. The NightSisters will keep trying to kill us as soon as they hear what I’ve done.

She had remained standing long enough to exorcise the rest of the collected energy from her body, but her limbs were heavy, the very cells of her body felt burned and scarred over. She couldn’t feel the Spirit any more, her connection damaged from the Grukkgruk arrived, and they needed to get to safety. She waded through the space between her and her mount, only to have the ground rush suddenly upward.

She was vaguely aware of being lifted from the ground by the masked boy, and then he spoke in his odd dialect to Grukkgruk.

“Friend.” He told the Rancor. “Singing Mountain Clan. Go.” Kelleri nodded weakly in agreement then everything went white.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Where is Grukkgruk? Where is that masked boy?” Kelleri demanded, as soon as she woke.

She was in a healer’s tent, she could tell from the pungent scent of herbs and medicine. A woman, dressed in the colors of the Singing Mountain Clan., startled from the small bench where she was grinding herbs in a round stone bowl. 

“You should not be awake yet, we’ve only just begun to repair your connection with the Spirit . I will get Mother Andrade.”

Kelleri repeated her question to the retreating back of the healer, but her only answer was the clacking of bones and metal that swung from the curtains of the tent.

Mother Andrade entered the tent clutching a carved wooden cane in her gnarled fingers. Her face was weathered by time as her hands, the skin thin and wrinkled, she almost 300 years old. Her advanced age did not diminish her commanding presence. Her grandmother had been the matriarch of the Singing Mountain Clan since its inception, and had seen a lot in her lifetime. 

“I am sorry, dear child, for all of your hardship. Your life has been short and you will need to be strong to endure the trials that await you. You are my granddaughter, you are my blood. You will be strong.” Her grandmother looked at her with sad eyes. It was the most sympathy her grandmother offered, before she was the formidable Clan Matriarch, and back to business, once more.

“Listen closely Kelleri Kylvarika, the Red Scar clan is no more. Your mother divided us, weakened us, and now a great evil grows from the discord. It has already touched your spirit. It will come for you and try to corrupt you, just as it came for me, just as it came for your aunts and your mother. It has woken, it has felt you, and it will come.” Mother Andrade stopped speaking for a moment, her voice grown hoarse.

Kelleri still heard the whispers of the Fanged God, she knew now why it was forbidden to use that power. Did her aunt hear it too? Did her mother? That last thought wracked through her body and escaped as a sob as she realized her mother would hear nothing. Kelleri sobbed until she was empty and numb, her grandmother sat at her bedside with a hand on her shoulder and waited for it to pass.

“You must have strength, granddaughter. There will be time for mourning, but now is not that time.” Mother Andrade said, the lines of her face hard, her eyes intense but not cruel. 

“I will not let it have you. I made the mistake of thinking that I could hold it at back alone, in my youth and overconfidence, I was just a girl and I thought that I had laid it to rest by trapping it in the Red Scar. But that was over 200 years ago and it was just biding its time, waiting for me to grow old... for my power to fade. It pains me to admit that we cannot keep you safe here and that you can no longer remain on Dathomir. You are strong in Spirit, granddaughter -- this threat will feed on that strength and free itself. Then it will destroy us all.”

“Where will I go?” Kelleri choked out through her tears.

“Do you know of the man who was your father? He was an off-worlder, I have made arrangements for him to escort you to the planet of Coruscant.”

Kelleri was numb with grief and exhaustion. She barely heard anything more that her grandmother told her. For three days she had been suspended in a trance, immersed in a ritual called a DreamWalk, supported by the entirety of the Singing Mountain Clan. Each woman lent their power to the ritual of healing, each took part in the repair of Kelleri’s connection to the Spirit which had been damaged by her use of the dark side of the Force -- but it wasn't enough. The DreamWalk didn't work and her connection to the Spirit was blackened, burned, withered... it would take time for it to heal and they didn't have time to help her recover. The Singing Mountain Clan couldn't protect her. Mother Andrade hadn’t even expected her to wake on Dathomir. Once she knew they couldn't do anything more to heal her granddaughter she contacted the only family that the girl had left.

Thus Kelleri was thrust into the cold emptiness of space, cut off from the Spirit, with the stranger who was her father.


	2. Chapter 1 - Master Eluciveth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You are a warrior, Kelleri Kylavrika." She tells herself, repeating it over and over. "You are a leader of a fierce Clan, you are stronger than this small glowing thing. It’s not the fang of the Rancor that kills, but the fire in its belly. It wasn’t the weapon that murdered your mother, it was the Dark Man in the strange mask. " She talked herself down from her fear and swallowed around the rising sickness in the back of her throat. She refused to sob in front of the Jedi Clan Leaders. She stretched her hand out once more and touched the lightsaber through the Spirit. The vines fell away, disappearing as if they were never there, and the weapon deactivated.

Chapter One: Master Eluciveth

Kelleri shifted under her simple woolen blanket, attempting to draw out all of the warmth from the patch of sun on her bed. She was groggy from a night of fitful sleep, nightmares had disturbed her until the bell for first meditation. It was the same recurring dream: glowing red storms chased her until thick black smoke swallowed her whole. 

It was a clear morning, and she decided to give herself five more minutes of sleep. Light shined through her windows, bounced off the high grey ceiling beams to her low pallet bed, and crossed onto the flat shelf with her noisy, flashing chronometer. 

“Zeth ja kuri! Zet zet zeth!”

Sheets flung onto the floor as she sprung from her bed. She yanked on her robes and boots, tore fingers through her wild red hair, and narrowly missed running over a cleaning droid as she raced down the hall. 

Of all days to be late! She had a scant four minutes to make it to the Advanced Culture and Political Science classroom, in the Padawan wing of the Academy, and it was flying by fast. She skidded around a corner and sprinted through the northwest quarter of the Temple while she imagined tendrils growing from her feet. She lived in the Accommodation sector, close to Padawan’s classrooms and training grounds, and had snuck into the classes countless times before. She ran through the blue-lit hall to the stairs on autopilot, knowing the stairs were closer than the turbolift, and concentrated on calming her emotions and reaching the Force. With each automatic step she imagined roots stretching deep into the ground, touching a pool of calm, then she blanketed herself in a small aura of the Force and willed herself to fade into the background. 

She bounded up the stairs two at a time, knowing that she was cutting it close. With the double doors of the classroom in sight, she flew down the final meters of the hallway and cut sideways in between the closing doors, right behind the last of the stragglers. There were two: a pair of Padawan friends, and she narrowly avoided their wild movements as they playfully shoved each other. She danced half a step backward to avoid being touched and then twirled around the two to stand at the back of the crowded room. She was out of breath, blood pumping full of adrenaline, but no one heard her – the Force aura disguised her from sight and sound. As long as no one bumped into her then her aura would remain intact, and then she couldn’t be detected, not even by droids.

By comparison, Jedi Master Eluciveth was a wellspring of calm. She waited for the class to settle, hands clasped in front of her, radiating a feeling of goodwill. She stood tall, quietly commanding, and stunningly beautiful at the center of the room. She was immaculate: sleek white hair flowing down her back from a high knot, crisp white linen Jedi robes with subtle patterns topped with a diaphanous blue over-robe, pale eyes were enhanced with an outline of cobalt blue. Kelleri shamefully tried to untangle her mess of thick, unevenly cut hair. She felt unkempt and savage in the presence of Master Eluciveth’s sleek sophistication. 

The Master Jedi had finished a successful diplomatic mission and piloted her personal vessel to the ziggurat Temple on the city-planet of Coruscant, just in time for her series of guest lectures. Her arrival the day prior was met with joyous ceremony and Kelleri wasn’t going to miss the class for anything. (A simple matter like not officially being a Jedi wasn’t going to stop her.) Master Eluciveth had a knack for weaving stories of her missions into lectures so every Jedi Padawan around squeezed into the half-moon lecture room hoping to hear something exciting from her latest adventure.

Kelleri stood at the back of the class and she forgot all about cloaking herself from view while absorbed in the lecture. Jedi Master Eluciveth was kind, funny, and well-spoken. She had a lot of anecdotes from her responsibilities as a Republic diplomat, liaison for the Jedi High Council, and the Head Administrator of her own Enclave. Kelleri felt overwhelmed with awe as the lecture ended: everything that she had thought of Jedi was compartmentalized into a narrow stereotype of a religious soldier, but Jedi Master Eluciveth shattered that assumption. For the first time since before her fourteenth birthday, Kelleri felt like she might have control of her own future. She would never be a politician, archivist, healer, nor weapons master – but she could be an ambassador like Master Eluciveth. The last time Kelleri felt this overcome with admiration was after she had watched her Clan take down a raid of sinister Nightsisters; like this Jedi, they were equal parts raw power and frightening beauty. 

A vision of red flashes hunted down the thought of her family. She blocked the horror out, hard, but the damage was done. Despite her regular meditation, memories still possessed her. The classroom closed in and panic clawed at her heart – she had to get out. She didn’t want to have a flood of tears, caused by her nightmarish memories, catch her in public. The students couldn’t clear from the room soon enough. She hurried to the exit, tear blind, near panic.

In her desperate rush she slammed into a something solid blocking the exit. She repelled against the shielded Padawan and she crashed flat onto her backside. She blinked stunned tears away, stammering to apologize in the strange common language. She was knocked senseless in the momentum of the collision, and couldn’t put together the words in Basic.

“Zet et zeth!” She cursed in her native tongue, then slapped herself immediately in embarrassment, and froze again when her thought processes caught up with her mouth.

“Please accept all of my pardons, Padawan... Oh, hello Little Sister! It is so nice to see you again, although I would have chosen a better meeting. May I help you from the floor?” Jedi Master Eluciveth towered above her, a vision of elegance and kindness, hand extended.

Kelleri gaped, frozen in place. Everything around her moved in slow motion save for her bombardment of thoughts: she was caught, in trouble she couldn’t escape from, she was so dead, and she was going to be taken before the Jedi Council, kicked out of the Temple, exiled and disgraced, never allowed to become a Padawan. They were coming to get her right now, weren’t they?

“Please accept my apologies Master! So sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you.” Her brain slammed into fast forward again as she rambled apologies and scrambled to her feet. She kept her head down, mortified. She felt her presence fading at the edges, she fiercely wanted to disappear or fade into the stone of the class room floor.

“Your Force ability is truly interesting, if you were to practice that technique I’m not sure anyone could detect you. It’s subtle, effective, that aura... you fade away completely. If I weren’t absolutely sure that I was staring at you I wouldn’t know you were there at all.”

She snapped up, “Are you taking me to the Council?”

“The Council? Whatever for? Do you want to fall asleep in your lunch? I have to warn you: the laundry droid will lecture you about stain removal after you drift off from sheer boredom, face first, into your soup. Not that I would know anything about that. Come this way, Kelleri, let’s dine together. We’ve so much catching up to do, and not more than a moment to do it in.”

Kelleri blinked in confusion then brought herself into full focus, imagining tendrils from the soles of her feet grounding her. “Catching up to do? We’ve only just met. Where are we going?”

“I parked my cruiser near the Skybridge – you will join me for lunch, won’t you?” Master Eluciveth asked. 

They set off together at a quick pace to the hangars, taking the stairs to the rooftop of the ziggurat structure of the Temple. The training rooms and chambers were located in the upper floor so the walk was brisk but short up the ancient staircases, bathed in soothing blue light.

“Little Sister, can you extend that aura? The one you were using to slip into my lecture?”

Kelleri thought about stretching her Force powers, glowing brilliant green and purple dancing over her skin, turning to ice blue as it enveloped the Master Jedi. She had to stand so close she almost touched the woman, shadowing her movements while concentrating on keeping the swirl of energy from cracking. 

“How would it work on objects, I wonder? And do tell me, what is your favorite food? Something from Dathomir?”

‘Little Sister’ was a blanket term for younger clan members on her home planet, ones that you knew: when Master Eluciveth used the term it immediately made her suspicious. The aura crackled and failed with the realization that they were conversing in her native language the entire time.

“How do you know so much about me and why are you taking such an interest in me? I’m not a trainee, nor a Padawan.” She hung back from the Jedi Master, squaring her shoulders. Any moment they would be turning the corner and marching to the Jedi Council for her impertinence and flagrant disobedience of the rules.

Master Eluciveth tipped her head to size up the younger girl, regarding her as if it were the first time she truly saw her.

“Ms. Kelleri, I pride myself in recognizing talent and making connections. You have a unique ability that I am interested in seeing developed. You will not get the training that you need here on Coruscant. Shall we discuss this over lunch?”

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Kelleri's story was well known to the members of the Jedi Council by now: Her clan was slaughtered at the hands of the Dark Men of the Red Scar during her coming of age ceremony, to save her own life she had to flee her home-planet. She spent a year bouncing from shady port of call aboard her father’s transport freighter, until she was delivered to the Jedi Temple for training. The transport unceremoniously dropped her on the Jedi’s front doorstep, dressed like a pirate in leather, armed with a blaster and a hastily scrawled note that she was an exile and in need of training and protection. The Jedi Knight who found her took her directly to the Jedi High Council.

The High Council elected to interview and test her immediately, as they had been waiting for her to arrive for over a year. (The Clan Mother, her own grandmother, set up her transport and sent word that she would be on her way there, vaguely saying that she would be safest with the Jedi Order.) They collected this cursory personal history for their records, interviewing her before a full meeting of the High Council. She stood at the center of a circular room, on a circular stone platform, which hovered just below the seats of twelve robed Jedi Masters.

The interview started wordlessly. A thin metal tube drifted gently towards Kelleri, bobbing along as if suspended from invisible string. The tube was a simple design, the same circumference as one of her spears, but only as long as the span of two of her hands. She examined the small plastic and metal cylinder, floating in the air in front of her, then looked back up to the group expectantly.

“Take the lightsaber, young one. It represents a Jedi’s attunement with the Force, and also represents the Jedi Order to the entire galaxy. It is more than a weapon, it is a symbol of using the Force for the side of Light and Peace. This one can only be activated by someone who is Force-sensitive, which you appear to be, extremely so, if all of the stories are true.”

She felt the weight of the lightsaber it in her hands, and caressed it with her fingers, she felt drawn and repelled by it all at the same time. She reached out to it with the Spirit, feeling the weight and shape of it, but also its golden warmth. She screamed in horror as she activated it, the blue plasma blade called forth, buzzing with its distinctive hum. She dropped the live lightsaber to the ground and scuttled away from it, wide-eyed and shaking. 

“Lessh fa, turre dena lessh fa!” She cursed, and worked a spell: she opened her palm then closed it into a fist. There was a second of delay before vines, made entirely from Force energy, erupted from the ground to wrap around the hilt and blade of the offending weapon, cocooning it from sight. Wild-eyed and breathing heavy she twitched her fingers, the same vines crept up the walls around her slowly, as she waited for the next movement from the chamber of people.

“How can we train a Jedi who is afraid of their weapon? She will never make it through her Initiate Trials.” Spoke Master Knel’i, a human male in green robes. His voice carried through the council chamber.

“She is a scared child, one who has seen much suffering. Temper your judgement! She doesn’t need combat training; she needs compassion, meditation, and guidance.” Countered Master Masu-ka, dressed in the white robes of a Healer. 

“That point is moot, she is some 15 years, and simply too old for Jedi training.” Master Gravis, another human male, insisted.

“She is strong in the Force, we cannot have powerful Force sensitive children allowed to fend for themselves, away from the Jedi Order. Imagine what havoc she could cause with this kind of wild, raw power.” Countered a dark-haired female Jedi, also humanoid, also in green robes.

“This case is exactly why we created the Canopy Enclave.” Stated another Master, an Arkanian female in light blue robes.

Kelleri peered at the blue blade from the edge of the raised platform as the Masters continued to debate. She was jittery and nauseous with the terror, unused to feeling so overloaded with fear. She hadn’t seen one of these horrible glowing weapons in person since the red one was used to murder her mother. Her vision went white at the edges as she numbly tried to block the tears and memories. She stopped trying to keep up with the drone of the conversation, unable to commit the names, voices, and faces of the speakers to memory. You are a warrior, Kelleri Kylavrika. You are a leader of a fierce Clan, you are stronger than this small glowing thing. It’s not the fang of the Rancor that kills, but the fire in its belly. It wasn’t the weapon that murdered your mother, it was the Dark Man in the strange mask. She talked herself down from her fear and swallowed around the rising sickness in the back of her throat. She refused to sob in front of the Jedi Clan Leaders. She stretched her hand out once more and touched the lightsaber through the Spirit. The vines fell away, disappearing as if they were never there, and the weapon deactivated.

“It is too soon to make a decision on her training status.” Commented a man, voice clear and strong. He was watching her struggle to collect herself, and met her eyes steadily. “We are in a unique position with Ms. Kylvarika. We can continue to provide therapy and sanctuary, after all what is the Accommodation Sector for? Then we will reconvene to discuss her future with the Jedi next month.” The Grand Master of the High Council announced his decision with finality after her first failed test, and exited the chamber.

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She was assigned to the Accommodation Sector close to where the Jedi Knights resided, in the First Knowledge Quarter. Master Masu-ka escorted her to her sparse rooms then instructed her on her first month’s tasks: meditate five times a day on the Jedi Code, clear her mind, calm any nervous chatter, and stop the unorthodox Dathomiri Force Witchery. Each morning she reported to a Youngling Clan Master and each night to a Jedi Knight. 

The Jedi Temple was a huge sprawling place: ancient, labyrinthine, and massive. The structure was built in a stepped, flat-topped pyramid, bigger than anything Kelleri had ever seen before. There were five spires, four rising from each quarter with the Sacred Spire in the middle. Kelleri wandered the Room of A Thousand Fountains and meditation gardens, the Temple memorials, every rooftop plaza, libraries, and the archives, steering clear of tower housing the Jedi Council. She watched aircraft and spacecraft returning from the hangars, and perched on the tower balconies over the huge city-covered world of Coruscant. Aside from playful interaction with the children, mealtimes, and a weekly meeting with Master Masu-ka, she spent her first month on Coruscant in solitude. Surrounded by peeling paint, stone, and durasteel in the fortress of the Jedi, she slowly erased Kelleri Kylvarika from her mind. Here she was a normal kid, waiting to be accepted as a Jedi Initiate, just like all of the other normal kids. Here she wasn’t a savant, nor future Clan Mother, chosen to be a military and spiritual leader. There wasn’t pressure to usher her people into a bright new future (eclipsing all of the missteps and mistakes of the past), but she didn’t have a clearly determined path with the Jedi, yet. 

Kelleri felt in limbo, directionless. When she finally got bored enough of exploring the Temple, she started sneaking into classes, trying to give herself purpose. She was an expert on the layout of the First Knowledge’s Quarter, the rooftops, mezzanine, meditation gardens, as well as the Jedi code, and Jedi-sanctioned advanced meditation techniques before being given a second interview with the High Council. 

The Council gained much of their information about her Force abilities and personal history from her weekly therapy sessions with Master Masu-ka. The terror of her memories from that night stopped her from being able to clarify everything that happened: she didn’t speak Basic well enough to explain the events on Dathomir, and for months she couldn’t stop herself from crying whenever she spoke of her clan. With the additional information provided by Master Masu-ka the second meeting went marginally better than the first. But, it was little more than a debate between the council members with Kelleri watching the action from the middle.

Several meetings later, over the course of the year, one voice was louder than the rest: Master Gravis insisted that she not be allowed to train with the Order. He garnered the support of two Corellian Jedi, the ones in green, during that year. They believed that she should be allowed to join the Jedi Corps, but that she was unfit to become a Jedi. The rest of the High Council remained divided on how she would train, but they believed that she should train; ironically, they adopted the Corellian Master Akala Vass’s earlier statement that Kelleri was too strong in the Force to simply be allowed to go without training. There were too many Force-sensitive children being abducted by dark Jedi, they couldn’t allow another to fall prey simply because of her advanced age.

She was aware, from the meetings, that Master Gravis considered her unfit for training as a Jedi because of her age, trauma, and upbringing. She knew that there was a group of dark Jedi in the galaxy gaining power, stealing Force-sensitive children to buffer their ranks, and that this was the group that they believed attacked her home-world. Kelleri’s story of the slaughter of her family and fear of lightsabers only fueled their reasoning, however they failed to speak with her in-depth about her history because she didn’t speak Basic. She was quick and clever, and the Masters wrongly assumed the language barrier kept more delicate things hidden from her understanding during those meetings than it truly did. She heard all of their debates with one-another during her year’s attendance in those meetings. The Jedi High Council concluded that dark Jedi were targeting her planet to collect Force-sensitive children because Dathomir had a high number of Force-sensitives, readily participated in slavery and slave trading, and had a history of using the Force in an unorthodox, and dangerously close to the dark-side, manner. But, the Jedi were wrong, Kelleri knew: the group of Dark Men didn’t want to collect all the Spirit-touched children on Dathomir – they targeted her family specifically. 

Master Masu-ka was right about the meditation, though: it did help her reach the Force easily, without needing the rituals and incantations from her home world. Everything from her home world seemed like superstitious nonsense, now, and she turned her back on the dangerous magic, except DreamWalking, that she learned on Dathomir. Meditation reminded her of DreamWalking, which she trained in extensively with her Shaman, and she dedicated herself to the practice. She hoped it would boost her chances of being accepted for Jedi Training. Months of debate went by and Kelleri was concerned that she would be in limbo for the rest of her life.

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Master Eluciveth sat in her ship making pleasant conversation while Kelleri ate. The Arkanian Master asked about her life on Dathomir, her training on Coruscant, about how her meditation on the Jedi Code was going. Kelleri answered dutifully. Eluciveth's face was carefully neutral, until Kelleri explained about how Master Masu-ka told her to stop using her unorthodox Force Witchery.

"Ms. Kelleri, you won't find what you need here on Coruscant, I'm afraid. I intend to change your path, if you’re interested. You do know that I am the Head Administrator of my own Jedi Academy, yes? I sponsor a clan of five students currently, there is always room for one more."

Kelleri stared up, unseeing, as she processed Master Eluciveth's words. Was she hearing correctly? Had Master Eluciveth just offered to sponsor her as a Jedi Initiate at the Tantau Enclave? Had she known this entire time that Kelleri would never be chosen to be a Jedi, that she would just be here as a guest in limbo - too powerful and dangerous to be anywhere else but among the Jedi never truly a part of their number. 

"I am already a warrior and a Shaman, trained in battle and the Force. I already know meditation and leadership. What will I learn as a Jedi?" She asked Master Eluciveth.

"Is this not the path you seek, then, little sister?" Master Eluciveth responded, looking slightly taken aback by Kelleri's forthright questions.

It felt odd to be able to fully explain herself in her native language, but now she couldn't stop herself 

"What will I learn as a Jedi? My people have no great love of the Jedi, I was sent here by my grandmother, brought here by my father, yet neither have any esteem for the Jedi. There was no other choice for them - not for me -and I have sat here through meditation and meetings that never seem to go anywhere. I am kept here under the guise of waiting for the Council to make their decisions but it all seems to be stalling, just to keep me here." She was surprised by her own thoughts and the words that tumbled form her mouth. 

Why was it that the Council never heard her speak in her own language? She pressed her lips together in a thin line. She was afraid before, afraid that she would never feel the Spirit, the Force, again. She was afraid that she would be sent back to Dathomir before she could figure out how to stop the black cloud from her dreams. She was afraid that she would never keep it from swarming over her.

She was not afraid now.

Master Eluciveth sat back with a hand to her chin thoughtfully. "What is it that you want from the Jedi? Will you choose this path if offered by the Grand Master or are you just stalling, just staying here because you have no where else to go?"

The dull throbbing of her heart was all Kelleri heard in the silence after Master Eluciveth's words. She felt compelled to speak and to explain the feelings that she nursed while on Coruscant. 

"I want to know how to keep my planet and my people safe." She didn't say: I want my clan back, I want to have a home and family again, but Eluciveth knew the truth of it without her words.  
She bit out another truth to cover the vulnerable, unspoken, impossible one. "I want to do this with my own strength and I want my grandmother, I want the Dark men, I want all of Dathomir to know that it was the daughter of Jyreetha that saved them all. If I have to learn to be a Jedi to accomplish this, then I will do what I must."

Eluciveth clicked her tongue. "Revenge is not the way of the Jedi, Kelleri Kylvarika, that desire can only lead to the dark side." 

"Revenge is the desire to destroy something in return for something of yours that was destroyed. I want to save something in honor of something of mine that was destroyed." She said, allowing the hope to grow in her heart.

"I think that the Force you to heal Dathomir but it will not be an easy path, you will have to dedicate yourself fully to your Jedi training and trust always that the lightside of the Force is guiding you down this path."

Kelleri nodded slowly. "I will... I do." And she was surprised that she could. She was surprised that after everything she could still trust: she could trust in the Spirit, in the Force, and that she could train to be a Jedi if it meant that she would be able to save her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much of the cursing is entirely my creation of Paecian mixed with researched bits of the legends version of the Dathomirian language.


End file.
